A Change for Rotten Tomatoes Ahead of Captain Marvel

The review-aggregating site has stopped allowing users to rate unreleased movies. Will the decision be enough to stem bad-faith attacks on certain films?

Captain Marvel hasn’t hit theaters, yet it garnered a dismal audience score of 54 percent—far below the totals for other recent Marvel movies. The poor grade is the result of “review bombing,” a practice that’s also widespread in the highly charged world of video gaming. Different groups organize campaigns to drag down the audience rating for a film (or a game) in response to a particular controversy, sometimes for sexist or racist reasons. Many culture writers noted that Captain Marvel, in particular, was likely being targeted for featuring a female hero. .....

Rotten Tomatoes said in a statement on the site. “Don’t worry though, fans will still get to have their say: Once a movie is released, audiences can leave a user rating and comments as they always have.”

The site has also said that Captain Marvelwasn’t the explicit reason for the change, which was reportedly part of a long-term strategy.

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A Change for Rotten Tomatoes Ahead of Captain Marvel

The review-aggregating site has stopped allowing users to rate unreleased movies. Will the decision be enough to stem bad-faith attacks on certain films?

Captain Marvel hasn’t hit theaters, yet it garnered a dismal audience score of 54 percent—far below the totals for other recent Marvel movies. The poor grade is the result of “review bombing,” a practice that’s also widespread in the highly charged world of video gaming. Different groups organize campaigns to drag down the audience rating for a film (or a game) in response to a particular controversy, sometimes for sexist or racist reasons. Many culture writers noted that Captain Marvel, in particular, was likely being targeted for featuring a female hero. .....

Rotten Tomatoes said in a statement on the site. “Don’t worry though, fans will still get to have their say: Once a movie is released, audiences can leave a user rating and comments as they always have.”

The site has also said that Captain Marvelwasn’t the explicit reason for the change, which was reportedly part of a long-term strategy.

Interesting. Not sure why people (groups of people) would need to spend so much time hating a film that hasn't even been seen yet.

Surely they can wage their campaign against the film when it is released. If their goal is to cause it to tank at the box office, they can still achieve that goal the day it premieres.

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'Captain Marvel’ rockets to historic $153M debut

.....″Captain Marvel” had to tangle with trolls who sought to lessen the film’s impact. Some fans claimed Larson’s hero didn’t smile enough, a charge she responded to with doctored pictures of previous male Marvel superheroes with awkwardly full grins. Others took issue with Larson’s statements about making her press interviews for the film more inclusive and not “overwhelmingly white male.”

The anti-“Captain Marvel” campaign included the flooding of Rotten Tomatoes audience scores, which artificially drove down the film’s score to 55 percent fresh from more than 44,000 votes as of Sunday. To combat the down-voting issue in advance of “Captain Marvel,” Rotten Tomatoes (which doesn’t require users to verify that they’ve seen a movie that they’re scoring) removed the ability to rate movies prior to release.

Taff declined to address “Captain Marvel” foes but applauded Marvel and Kevin Feige for propelling a movie that expanded the Marvel universe........

".....they generally enjoyed the humor, the sincerity of its themes, and above all, the stunning visual feats the filmmakers pulled off in this hybrid stop motion/cg adventure. Regardless of what some people think about the studio’s stories, one undeniable thing to praise about Laika is their commitment to creating new worlds and unique characters in original stories.

Here are some takes on the film from critics at major publications:....

" Thank God for Laika. At a time when convenience has become the determining factor of most artistic consumption, intellectual property is prized over actual creativity, and the great animation houses are either stuck in some kind of limbo (Studio Ghibli) or lost in the profit margins of their own mythology (Pixar), the Oregon-based stop-motion studio behind the likes of Coraline, Paranorman, and Kubo and the Two Strings is still chugging along, one painstaking shot at a time. The degree of care that goes into every detail of these movies almost requires a certain level of quality, as each handcrafted flourish is born out of a thousand hours of meticulous work.".........

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Terry Gilliam Has Finally Slain His Giant

Released at last after decades of mishaps, the director’s latest film, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote,will fascinate his fans—but might frustrate more casual viewers.

"It’s hardly shocking that Terry Gilliam might see a bit of himself in Don Quixote. The director and Monty Python member has made a career of tilting at windmills, mounting ambitious film projects, such as Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, that are often plagued by studio meddling and budget overruns and end up feeling like implausible gambits.

But for three decades, the giant that Gilliam could not slay was The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, a fourth-wall-breaking, loopily postmodern adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes’s masterpiece.

That the film exists, and is coming to limited theaters this weekend, feels like an achievement all on its own....

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I'm sure there are many UNanticipated movies that will end up being treasured afterwards. I can safely say that for a majority of movies, their real worth are not determined before release, during release, or in the year of their release, but YEARS after their release. I can also safely say that a majority of the movies mentioned here will be eventually forgotten. Just dig up this thread N years from now and see what I mean.